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5
GUINEA PIG
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Dr. Shan had generally visited the
ward with an entourage of six or seven doctors and housemen tagging along to
observe. Now the others began showing up in smaller groups without Shan,
probably because Nita's family and friends had badgered the specialists
constantly with questions, and they had no answers to give them.
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The other doctors had a pattern of
callousness. They could not heal her, so they seemed to use her as some human
textbook to increase their knowledge. They normally tested Nita's senses with
sharp probes and then stood mumbling among themselves. Whenever Nita finally
grew irritated enough to ask what they were saying, they invariably ignored
the question with a smile, tapped her on the shoulder or ran their fingers
through her hair, and said, "You'll be all right." It was the token
"concern" that angered Nita most. She could not believe they really
cared about anything beyond building their own careers.
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They had a way of ignoring the
civilities Nita had known all her life. They would leave the curtain open as
they lifted her body and pulled her clothes off, and move her numb legs into
a variety of positions, as if Nita had no pride. And always, more pricking
with long needles. They exposed her womanhood without as much as a casual
care. She was a sexless mannequin - an object, a thing.
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At eleven one morning, one of the
doctors arrived with the usual long needle. He put the patient through the
usual embarrassing paces, carelessly probing and poking until she was on the
verge of exploding. Then, without warning, Dr. Shan strode into the room,
with the rest of the group on his heels. He marched directly to Nita's bed,
talking loudly, obviously in the middle of some exciting medical discourse to
his elite audience. He propped her legs up, pricked her once, and said,
"Huh! So you can't feel,
huh?" And he continued with his speech to the others.
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Nita was seething - furious.
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As Shan went on talking, he picked
up her foot, spreading her legs wide, and began criss-crossing the base of
her foot with the long needle. She could see she had become a guinea pig to
him, an object lesson for medical students. He kept on talking at full speed,
never looking down at the trenches he was digging in Nita's foot. After a
while he flopped her on her side and continued his cutting on her thigh,
still lecturing with reckless abandon.
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Nita's eyes flashed silently; she
was irate.
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Eventually he went back to her
foot, oblivous to his patient, intent only on his words. Nita felt she was
being treated like a corpse that refuses to co-operate by being considerate
enough to die.
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A ten-year-old girl in the next
bed had watched the entire episode. Suddenly she shouted, "There's blood
on her legs!"
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Everyone stopped to look at the
mess. Nita's foot was bleeding profusely from the ragged wound. Shan grabbed
a wad of cotton and cleaned up the blood and promptly disappeared with his
troops. Time to leave the zoo! Nita relaxed her jaws and let the tears brim
up in her eyes. The shame, the humiliation, the aching hurt in her soul, was
almost more than she could bear.
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In mid-afternoon Nita's cousin
Chris, a medical researcher, stopped by to visit. He looked at her leg in
horror.
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"What's this? What is
this?" he exclaimed.
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"It bled today when they
tested me," Nita responded softly.
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Chris was incredulous.
"They're not supposed to test like that!" He stalked angrily out of
the ward, hungry for a piece of the man who had carved up his cousin. But his
angry attack on the doctor was like closing the barn door after the horse had
gone. Nita would bear the scars of that lecture until her dying day.
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She closed her eyes, trying to
shut out the tension - but it was futile. She felt like a chunk of meat. Her
body was numb. Her heart ached.
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She longed to go home; to climb
out of this white linen casket and back into the comfort of her own house.
The house her daddy had built and promised to her. She longed for home, for
her old room, for the garden, for the street that led down to the shore, for
impromptu cricket matches with the neighbour kids, for her daddy.
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5 GUINEA PIG
